Ambitious Crash a Racial Collision

I wrote down no notes while watching Paul Haggis’ (an Oscar nominee for his superb screenplay to Clint Eastwood’s Best Picture-winning Million Dollar Baby making his feature directorial debut) Crash. Not that I write all that many notes to begin with. Usually, they consist of little things here and there, items of dialogue, lighting or some other bit of technical what-not I want to recall later for my review. If anything, the more notes I write down the worse it is, a smorgasbord of complaints never a good thing when I put pen to paper the next day.

But I almost never write anything; it just doesn’t happen. It is a rare picture that forces me to forget I have a pen in my hand, let alone that there is a notepad weighing on my lap, and when it does happen I find myself usually at a loss to even know what to say. Not completely, of course (I’m still a writer after all), but just enough that I tend to come out of the theater more than a little dumbstruck, shocked as to what just transpired.

This is how I felt leaving Crash. I knew what I just watched wasn’t perfect; too many coincidences, too many clichés; but the power of the performances, words and images refused to leave me alone. Haggis’ film is a humbling experience, a force of nature compelling viewers of every stripe to examine themselves and evaluate how it is they look at those walking through life around them. A profoundly devastating piece, I alternately admire and loathe it (both in near-equal measure), Haggis and co-writer Bobby Moresco having the temerity to make a Robert Altman-esque life-in-L.A. feature entirely about race.

Bless them, for it’s about time someone grew some balls down in Hollywood again. Sure, it’s a given that each of the multifarious tales being spun in Crash are going to fins someway to collide and bounce into one another by the time the end credits roll. And, sure it’s a bit of a stretch when said characters meet up and brutally play off one another only to have the whimsical hand of fate spare or shatter them to pieces depending on its mood. But so what? This is a smart, intoxicatingly aggressive and intellectual entertainment bristling with purpose and intent. It makes its statements effortlessly, refusing to beat the audience over the head with its messages instead using graceful, almost painterly, brushstrokes to hammer its points home.

What’s most remarkable is that there are no good guys or bad guys, no black or white, just an almost insurmountable cavalcade of grey slowly sucking the humanity out of each and every soul residing within Los Angeles. At first glance, the hard-hearted police officer (Mat Dillon) lasciviously manhandling the lithely beautiful wife (Thandie Newton) of a noted television director (Terrence Howard) is a racist bigot worthy of scorn. But what about when the same man risks life and limb for one of these same two at the scene of a particularly vicious traffic accident, cradling the fragile and delicate frame of the victim as they slowly cry in terrifying need? Then there’s the pair of nattily dressed African American gentlemen (Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges, Larenz Tate) strolling through a mostly white suburb bemoaning the fact many of the people walking by automatically cringe and slink away even though they look like nothing more than All-American college students. But when they pull out guns, carjacking a SUV right out from underneath the local District Attorney (Brendan Fraser) and his wife (Sandra Bullock), aren’t they just proving all that malignant stereotyping by the Caucasians walking by is, in fact, justified?

No one gets off clean here. Don Cheadle’s upright detective has to decide whether to make a dead (and black) dirty cop look clean so a racist detective can be deservedly hung-out to dry, while at home he’s under fire from his Puerto Rican partner (Jennifer Esposito) for offhandedly calling her Mexican during a post-coital embrace. Rookie officer Ryan Phillippe takes the high road, refusing to ride along with another cop who’s blatantly racist only to discover he’s just as quick to pull a gun on a minority suspect as the next guy. This is a dark, twisty labyrinth full of stereotypes and pitfalls that force even the most racially unbiased person imaginable to suddenly find themselves screaming, “Speak American!” to an irate and irascible foreigner.

The acting here is beyond extraordinary. Dillon, Phillippe, Howard, Bridges, Bullock, Newton and Michael Pena turn in what might be career-best performances, while Cheadle, Tate and Fraser lend such sterling support I can’t imagine the picture without them. Dillon and Phillippe, in particular, standout, both of them digging so deeply within their characters nuances and subtleties it would be a shame if we weren’t talking about one or both of them come Oscar season. Newton, too, shimmers, her moment recounting the nausea free-floating through her entire being as Dillon’s cop basically finger-raped her in full view of her powerless husband one to shake even the stoutest heart to their very core.

As good as it all is, Haggis piles on the coincidences like no other. In Altman’s best features (Nashville, MASH, The Player, Short Cuts) all his tangents collide together in almost effortless abandon. Here, these connections get more and more contrived as the picture moves on. As a director, his attempts at foreshadowing are heavy-handed at best, obtuse and contrived at their worst (a scenario concerning an angry Muslim immigrant and a handgun particularly awkward). More, the film has no rhythm, moving in such fits and starts I could almost feel myself lurching back and forth in my seat.

It doesn’t matter. Haggis makes you think from first frame to last, something no other movie this year – especially one out of Hollywood – has even remotely been able to do. It gives us full-bodied characters portrayed by actors investing themselves wholeheartedly and with outright abandon. The picture is filled with images and statements sure to burn themselves into memory, while the whole hurtles like Haley’s Comet to a climax both empowering and upsetting. But, most of all, Crash forces us to reassess our own inner voices as it applies to race. In the end, like the characters inhabiting this cinematic slice of L.A., you might not like the answers, but you’ll at least be glad you took the time to think about the questions.

Film Rating: êêê1/2  (out of 4)